Tilak Ratnanather, associate research professor of biomedical engineering, received an honorable mention and a prize of $10,000 for the Provost’s Prize for Faculty Excellence in Diversity.

Ratnanather earned this honor for his work developing mentoring programs that provide opportunities in STEM for deaf and hard of hearing individuals.

“We still have a long way to go to overcome the societal challenges of hearing loss: isolation, invisibility, and ignorance,” says Ratnanather. “Fortunately the advent of cochlear implants, digital hearing aids, and captioning with automatic speech recognition can go a long way for more than half of the 400,000 college students in the United States and many more abroad who do not self-disclose their hearing loss, and yet face barriers in college.”

A team of eight Johns Hopkins University undergraduate students took second place in the international Values and Ventures Business Plan Competition at Texas Christian University last week for their novel design to help transport and implant tissue during corneal surgery.

Xiaoqin Wang, Ph.D., a professor of biomedical engineering, neuroscience and otolaryngology–head and neck surgery, and director of the Laboratory of Auditory Neurophysiology at The Johns Hopkins University, has won a $12 million award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for work with a multi-university team that will focus on targeted neuroplasticity training — a technique that stimulates peripheral nerves to speed up learning processes and improve cognitive skills by modulating the neural circuits in the brain.

Fernando Vicente Zegarra, a junior in biomedical engineering, has been recognized by the Goldwater Scholarship program for his outstanding promise in a research career.

Originally from Lima, Peru, Zegarra studies biomedical engineering with a focus on computational biology. Anchored in Jonathan Schneck’s lab for the past two years, he has been involved in multiple cell engineering projects, characterizing the interactions of stimulating antigen-presenting cells and immune system T cells.

Two students from Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering have been awarded 2017 Whitaker International Fellowships, a career-enhancing program that supports young biomedical engineers’ travels overseas to conduct research and take coursework.

Six individuals from Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering have been named Graduate Research Fellows – outstanding students in science, technology, engineering, or math graduate programs who have been recognized by the National Science Foundation.

The NSF Graduate Research Fellows program is the oldest graduate fellowship of its kind. Fellows receive three years of financial support in the form of an annual stipend of $34,000 and a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees paid to the institution. They have opportunities for international research and professional development, and have the freedom to conduct their own research.

Sacre, Sridevi Sarma, and Ernst Niebur, professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine, will exploit a unique opportunity to record from humans with medically-refractory epilepsy who undergo a surgical procedure for placement of depth electrodes for seizure monitoring while they perform a gambling-based decision-making task. They will combine (i) statistical modeling technique to estimate an (unobserved) internal state that they hypothesize is modulating participants’ behavior from or toward the rational reasoning and (ii) statistical analysis to examine region-specific and epoch-specific modulations in neural activity (power spectral analysis and non-parametric statistical tests).

Biomedical Engineering senior Jourdan Ewoldt, shown at right, took home the first place award at the 2017 Biomedical Engineering Society Mid-Atlantic Undergraduate Research Day on March 10. Hosted this year on the Homewood campus by Johns Hopkins University, the BMES event attracted students from several nearby universities including the University of Maryland, the University of Delaware, and Widener University.

The day began with a keynote speech by Nicholas Durr, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and undergraduate program director of the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design at Johns Hopkins, and included a poster session, a networking lunch, student oral presentations, and an award ceremony.